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Biography

Joseph David "Joe" Brooks (born May 18, 1987) is a British singer/songwriter and musician. Brooks started out as a Myspace musician when he was 17 and gained popularity on the site while releasing two independent EPs. By 2008 he was labeled the "Number 1 Unsigned UK Artist" on MySpace and had amassed 11 million song plays. In 2009 he signed to Jason Flom's Lava Records and Universal Republic Records, where he released his first full-length and major label album, Constellation Me, in 2010. Following his exit from Lava/Universal in 2011, he released a fan-funded independent EP, A Reason To Swim, later that year.

Joe Brooks was born in Southampton, England, the son of Joel Brooks, a trucking-business owner, and Sally, a primary-school teacher. The second of three siblings, he has an older sister and a younger brother. He grew up in Shirley, Southampton where he attended Wordsworth and St. Mark's Schools. As a child he focused on sports, beginning to play tennis when he was four years old. As a tennis player, he would play for the next twelve years, and played in competitive tournaments. He quit tennis at 16 when he had plans of going into a career of sports coaching.

Besides sports, Brooks's interest in music also began at a young age, when seeing his mother play the piano led him to ask for piano lessons when he was 10 years old. He took formal piano lessons for a year before quitting due to little interest in classical compositions. A few years later when he was 16, he saw musician and guitarist Derrin Nauendorf play at a local music club, which inspired him to begin playing the guitar. Using his mother's old classical guitar he began to teach himself to play in his room, as well as receiving help from musicians he met while attending the Soul Survivor music festivals. Inspired by such artists as Jack Johnson, Jason Mraz and Bryan Adams, Brooks threw himself into music and started to practice singing and composing songs.

After graduating from Mountbatten Secondary School in Hampshire, his new interest in the guitar and recording lead him to focus on Music Technology classes while attended Barton Peveril Sixth Form College.[3] Between music classes in college and recording at home on his own digital recorder, he began to produce his own songs and covers.